As computing devices become more prevalent and widely used among the general population, the amount of data generated and utilized by such devices has rapidly increased. For example, recent advancements in computing and data storage technology have enabled even the most limited form-factor devices to store and process large amounts of information for a variety of data-hungry applications such as document editing, media processing, and the like. Further, recent advancements in communication technology can enable computing devices to communicate data at a high rate of speed. These advancements have led to, among other technologies, the implementation of distributed computing services that can, for example, be conducted using computing devices at multiple locations on a network. In addition, such advancements have enabled the implementation of services such as network-based backup, which allow a user of a computing device to maintain one or more backup copies of data associated with the computing device at a remote location on a network.
Existing system and/or data backup solutions enable a user to store backup information in a location and/or media separate from its original source. Thus, for example, data from a computing device can be backed up from a hard drive to external media such as a tape drive, an external hard drive, or the like. However, in an implementation of network-based backup and/or other solutions that can be utilized to provide physically remote locations for storing backup data, costs and complexity associated with transmission and restoration of user data between a user machine and a remote storage location can substantially limit the usefulness of a backup system. For example, in the case where backup data is stored at a remote network location, data associated with respective versions of an original copy of a file and/or system image can be transmitted to remote storage, where the respective versions can later be retrieved for restoration. However, a sizeable amount of data is generally transmitted over the network in such an example, thereby consuming expensive bandwidth. In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to implement network-based backup techniques with improved efficiency.